Ordinary Lies - this predictable tale was saved by a sucker punch, review

New workplace. New characters. New secrets. That’s the basis for this second series of Danny Brocklehurst’s acclaimed drama anthology about ordinary people and the fallout that occurs when their lives get knocked off course.

Series one was well received last year with a regular audience of six million, but to keep the same characters would have stretched credibility, so it’s just as well that Brocklehurst (whose previous work includes Shameless, Clocking Off and Accused - all meaty excavations of working-class life ) has picked a new cast of colleagues whose nine-to-five personas hide a darker personal life.

Jill Halfpenny and Con O'Neill

This time, it's about the secrets and lies of people who work together in a sportswear firm in Cardiff. The star of the first episode was the terrific Con O’Neill (whose shifty antics in Happy Valley nearly had us convinced that he was that show’s serial killer) as Joe Brierley, a full-volume sales manager who used Yoda quotes to motivate his team.

When he had a sneaking suspicion that his wife Belinda (Jill Halfpenny) was cheating on him, he fitted hidden cameras in his home to spy on his nearest and dearest. Nothing to hide, nothing to fear, eh? But, after huddling himself away in the toilet or under the stairs to watch his Big Brother footage, he went from being a Good Time Joe to an angry and aggressive paranoiac.

It was, of course, predictable that Joe would come home from work early to track Belinda through the streets after seeing her with a couple of strangers. And, of course, she wasn’t really having an affair at all… but doing something more shocking. And that's where the sucker punch came as it turned out that she was hunting down supposed paedophiles in retribution for their daughter beingabused by her gymnastics coach. It sounds far fetched, but then Ordinary Lies thrives on a combination of grim reality and grand operatic storylines.

While Ordinary Lies lacks the vim and vigour of its antecedent Clocking Off, and despite Halfpenny and O’Neill cast to type as hardened housewife and desperate middle-aged man, there was enough narrative tension for it to remain compelling. It also made a terrific case for honesty being the best policy.